Approach to monitor application states for self-managing systems

Abstract

The present invention is directed to systems and methods that treat the monitoring of a software application as a separate and independent concern from the software application itself. The present invention utilizes aspect oriented programming to intercept, analyze, decompose the application states of a software application and then to link appropriate non-invasive constructs into the software application code to provide application state information to an autonomic manager through a plurality of sensors. The autonomic manager analyzes the application state information for compliance pre-defined parameters, and takes appropriate corrective action including modifying the software application states using a plurality of effectors. The sensors and effectors are linked as non-invasive constructs to the software application, and in aspect oriented programming constitute aspects. In order to prevent any adverse or undesirable effects to the software application as a result of the application state analysis and selected action, a safety mechanism is included in communication with the effectors.

Description

FIELD OF THE INVENTION [0001] The present invention is directed to autonomic monitoring of software applications. BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0002] As the complexity of software applications and systems increases, building systems with self-managing or autonomic features becomes increasingly important. Monitoring applications and taking corrective actions when exceptions occur is a common approach to self-managing in software applications. In order to provide self-managing functionality to a software application, a set of sensors is connected to the software application by creating and implementing the corresponding interfaces. This requires modifying the source code of the software application and the sensor if the interfaces are not already available. However, the availability of well documented source code is often limited. This limitation is especially acute for legacy systems where the source code is often unavailable and poorly annotated. In addition, building such self-manag...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0006] The application state information is provided to an external entity, which could be an autonomic manager that manages an application or a group of applications. The autonomic manager is created to monitor one or more software applications and is capable of collecting and analyzing that information for compliance with one or more parameters. To monitor the state of the software application, the autonomic manager monitors the values of its variables as well as the sequence of processes the application has executed. Sensors collect the software application state information, and a logic processor is used to perform the compliance analysis. Based upon the results of the analysis, the autonomic manager can take appropriate correcti

Problems solved by technology

However, the availability of well documented source code is often limited.

This limitation is especially acute for legacy systems where the source code is often unavailable and poorly annotated.

In addition, building such self-managing systems is hindered by a lack of available generic monitoring tools that can be used for a variety software applications running on various hardware platforms.

If source code is not available, or it is too costly to change and test the source code, it becomes very difficult to add such monitoring functions to software applications, limiting the application of autonomic behavior in these applications.

Even given the availability of the source code, the sheer number of events that potentially need to be monitored make the integration of self-monitoring difficult and substantially increase the complexity and cost of developing the software applications.

Images